


The Thought

by OyAhhhh



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 10:31:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20487452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OyAhhhh/pseuds/OyAhhhh
Summary: Steve thought he would be over it. He thought, or he believed, that returning to that age he belonged would be the end of it, his resolution once and for all. Give it two, or three months, twenty or thirty years. And he would be over him.





	The Thought

Steve thought he would be over it. He thought, or he believed, that returning to that age he belonged would be the end of it, his resolution once and for all. He thought he would forget. He was certain that he loved Peggy just the same, no more and no less. The woman he had loved for decades was just as how he remembered; she welcomed him home with her warm hazel eyes and familiar, scented, elegant dark curls outlining her delicate chin. Her beauty was blessed as always, but when she leaned in close and her lips were a fingertip away, his heart sank. He pulled himself away and started awkwardly talking about the weather, eyes shooting at everywhere but her. He could feel her thoughts in the way she watched him. When he pulled himself together to look her in the eyes, he could see it: she knew. Somehow grief was not what he read, somehow the glittering light felt like relief and forgiveness to him, and his heart settled, for the first time in a long while.

They disagreed—him and Peggy. He thought one night he would wake up, sit up in the dark on his old yellowing mattress, and then realise that he had forgotten about him. Peggy knew different. The first weekend he came back, she arrived at his apartment, dropped him food and groceries. She paused at the door when she was just about to leave. He was standing behind the dusted kitchen table under the flickering lights, looking at her across the air of nearly a hundred years. For a moment he thought her eyes were watering. She looked at him for what felt like a decade, longer than the days and nights he had waited for her eyes to meet his again the way they used to. Eventually she turned her back on him, twisted the doorknob and headed away, spoke not one single word, but he thought she had said everything there needed to be said.

The first few weeks were hard. He remembered everything as vividly as if it was yesterday, which in a way, it was. He could see them and feel them right in front of him, bleeding or smiling or hurting or breathing. In the mornings he would walk into the kitchen, expecting to see them gathering around the table laughing and joking, with the doctor serving, and then when he settled into the fact that he was eating alone, he would habitually pass his strawberry jam to the left. Before they split off in those final years, he used to always go down to Tony’s work room to drag him out for breakfast, and Tony used to always sit on his left, bickering with Clint, pouring boiling black coffee down his throat. Of all their faces he could always see Tony’s the clearest, even then. Tony was simply so enchanting: his laughter, his eyes, his hair, his moustache, even his temper at times of exhaustion. All of him, every part of him, he loved and loved so dearly. His shadow Steve saw at corners and behind walls in his apartment, felt as real as it was, as warm as his embrace, as beautiful as he was.

He first saw Tony at the kitchen table, where he stood when Peggy left him, and there he made a wrong assessment of himself yet again. He was no flawless Captain anymore, he kept making mistakes. Maybe the spell of a charming supernatural soldier was broken long before he had realised, long before they took action, so far back that it could sprout early in Siberia. He thought give it three or four months and the ache biting to his heart would fade, but long after his horridly dreadful prediction he still found himself lost in his own flat, staring at where Tony would have stood and their eyes would have met. His eyes had stopped burning like they were caught on fire, but his chest never ceased to ache.

Sometimes he dreamed about how Tony used to smile. The last few years they had together floated around in his head and all the tears, blood, anger blocked his mind. Tony never smiled at him again, in their last years he was so uptight and grey and sunken so deep into despair, that Steve never found the time to tell him just how much he—in fact that was a lie. He had time, all the time in the world, all the time Tony deserved, but fear grasped him tight. He dared not to move around Tony, afraid of a wrong step on a wrong key setting off a disastrous noise of rage and hatred. He was a coward who tip-toed and backed up into shadows. Now that he thought about it, he thought Tony might have waited for him, and with the days gone by, he could bear the reflection in the mirror no more. In the last year all he saw on Tony’s face were exhaustion and despair, in his eyes blankness. They scared him, but it was irreversible and inevitable and inescapable and he knew it. The destined fate had lied there all along but none of them had the courage to unveil its disguise. They won but he lost.

He thought a lot about how they once danced—Tony and him. He was nervous about social galas and balls, uncomfortable with all the modern rules and restrictions. Jarvis advised him to Tony. He thought Tony would have refused straight away, but the man came down to his room and offered a lesson with a grin on his face. They danced to the Waltz all night, mostly Tony dancing the female moves swiftly and Steve stepping on his feet, blushing from head to toes. He remembered how the music sounded when Tony looked up at him and smiled, winked at him teasing at how clumsy he was, how the moon shone through the darkness in the room and landed on Tony’s shoulders. He thought he caught his breath for a second. Tony’s eyes gleamed underneath the moonlight. They reminded him of fires back at the campsites during the war, the leaping flames he used to watch from inside his tent, the dancing lit wood guiding them through misery. He believed that wherever there was fire there was hope, and they were taught that wherever there was fire there was home. Tony snapped him out of his thoughts with a pinch at his chest. He frowned out of habit. Tony raised his eyebrows. He whispered into his ears an apology, then a kiss soft as a feather landed on his chest, where Tony’s fingertips had tweaked at his shirt. He was afraid that Tony heard his heartbeat, loud as war drums.

At certain nights, when the tides were high and the moon was bright, when the sea breeze came rustling his bedroom curtains clinging onto his sheets, he would see Tony’s smile in his dreams. Memories like pictures from the old sealed books, came roaring back into his mind like the stars flooding the sky. The visions were dotted and faded like photographs lost in the river of time, and never in one of them Tony looked at him. Nevertheless, his smile was genuine and clean and bright and youthful and fun, like the man he was and always had been. He would be wrapped up in either a neat suit or muddy work uniform, his moustache cut or bushy, his hair gelled or lazy, his glowing white teeth showing or hidden. Every single detail felt so true to him, all locked behind the metal gate in his mind, let out only late in the night when he had deceived himself into sleep. It was enough for him; watching him from a distance, knowing that he was there, missing his eyes. The nights when he dreamt of Tony would be the bests of his.

He never stopped trying to draw Tony in his sketchbook. Somehow the duplications always seemed unnatural and unreal, awkward and uncomfortable. It became even more of a struggle after Siberia, when he was thinking of Tony and finding it harder and harder to put him down in lines and patterns. There was only one drawing of Tony he was satisfied with: the one he finished on the night of the Waltz. Tony was clear to him as the Sun then, burnt in his corneas leaving an inerasable mark. Tony saw him the next morning, joked with everyone how Steve must have had a magical night with a hot lady in blonde. Steve had his sketch book in his front pocket then, and the weight of it wore him down. He struck back saying that it was a brunette instead. Them around the table laughed while exchanging looks of surprise and disbelief, but the smile on Tony’s face fell and he lowered his head. The hard edge of his old sketch book poked at Steve’s heart, creating a sharp, pinching pain, and he mistakenly grabbed Clint’s fork for his cereals.

Then one night he dreamt of himself running in the Central Park, like how he used to every morning and evening when he was young, and bumped into Tony lining up for the evening donuts at the back of a queue. It was a cool Autumn day and the Sun was sinking behind the green hills. The sky was dyed rose and the wind whistled through the crowded street, sweeping across all the fallen cracking leaves. His foot stepped on one particularly fragile pile accidentally and for some subtle reason, the noise attracted Tony. He turned and saw Steve, standing there sweating and panting, and his eyes lit up as he smiled. His deep brown eyes shone underneath the scarlet sunset, like honey melting in the midsummer sunlight, his cheeks coloured red and his face softened. Steve paused there and their eyes met for a long moment which felt like a century, with noises muffled and the whole of the world slowed down, when time ceased to exist, and it was just Tony and him. Steve held his breath, even though he knew Tony was smiling at the man in his memories instead of him. He stared almost greedily at Tony, at his eyes where the only thing he could see was his own reflection, at his worriless gleeful face, at his yet unbroken happiness, at every wrinkle and freckle on every inch of his olive skin. Then suddenly he woke, breathless in sobs and wails, his pillow soaked in tears and his body as cold as the drowning sea. He sat up on his bed as he felt the moon shone over his window, saw its pale whispering light crept onto his sheets. He curled up and buried his head in between his thighs, reaching underneath his shirt to his bare chest and clutched at where he had kissed. Then the thought kicked in, as calm and still as Tony’s eyes before his fingers snapped and Steve’s whole world collapsed there right then, that he is never getting over him.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments and tell me what you think!  
There might be a sequel, giving my favourite couple of all times a happy ending. Still considering this possibility.


End file.
